Quote:
Originally Posted by aab7855
I do think that Santiago is way easier to get around without a car compared to Ponce, but with no metro system like Santo Domingo, it´s not super easy.
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Santiago doesn’t have a transition zone like Santo Domingo have. There are no colonial buildings in the city because what wasn’t destroyed by various earthquakes through the centuries have been destroyed during the multiple invasions.
The city had never been protected with a wall, despite that as early as 1600’s the French invaded from the west and laid to waste the western Cibao including its main city of Santiago. The people left running for La Vega and Moca as the French got closer to the city, invaded the city, and laid the place to waste. It was the first of many invasions that first the French and then the Haitians made in their attempt to get first the Spaniards and then the Dominicans to western rule.
If you notice, the only thing from colonial times is the street grid in the Center and the parks areas which was open plazas in colonial times. The main buildings and churches have been rebuilt. In 1805 the Haitians even committed a massacre of Dominicans that included the Santiago population that didn’t hid in the forests and the mountains. Many people jumped in the Yaque del Norte River that cuts south of the Center, some with their children on hand, when the Haitians rushingly invaded the town and killed every thing that moved (everyone that jumped in the river died, because at that point there is a deep gorge between the town and the river.) You would think they would had learn their lessons by that time, considering the invasions they witness by then, but nope. In future invasions the town remained with no walls for protection.
Anyways, there are many historic buildings in the Center, but they are all from the 1800’s and some from the first half of the 20th century. Then everything opens up, even the streets get abruptly wider and windier, and the city becomes modern with no transition.
In Santo Domingo you can see stages in the buildings, starting with the colonial buildings in its Colonial Zone and working your way to the modern city. Both cities are mostly car centric because most of the urban space was built in the last 30 to 40 years. I still think its still easier to get public transport in Santiago than in Ponce. There is no metro in both cities, though they are already talking about it for Santiago.
As can be noted, the Spaniards had the whole island plus adjacent ones to themselves for about 200 years. Then the French settled in the northwestern coast in the 1600’s, which was basically empty but had lots of cattle that ran away from the Spanish, and since then have been fighting first the French and then the Haitians. Both initially wanted to get rid of the Spanish on the island and keep the whole island to themselves. The latter, after realizing they couldn’t force the Dominicans to take up their ways or to get rid of them, decided to focus on gaining more land to themselves.